This invention relates to voting.
Current voting techniques do not provide a voter with the ability to verify that their vote has been counted, and counted correctly. Typically, a voter enters a voting booth at a polling station, makes their voting choices by ballot and then exits the voter booth. In general, the actual tallying of votes is made later, after polls have closed, either by hand counting by election officials or by a ballot-counting machine. The tallying process does not provide any means for each voter to verify that his or her vote was counted, and counted correctly.
According to an aspect of this invention a method of verifiable voting includes receiving election selections, producing a receipt representation of the election selections, the receipt having a unique receipt number for a voter, and publishing election results, the election results including the election selections and unique receipt number.
One or more of the following features may also be included: responding to choices displayed by a computer to make election selections, entering a voter station where the voter station is a voting booth located at a polling place, entering a voter station, where the voter station is an electronic connection to the computer, and responding to choices transmitted by the computer to make election selections, printing a receipt at the polling place, printing a receipt in the voter booth, listing a receipt number and election selections on an electronic medium, entering a voter station where the voter station is a mail in ballot, mailing a printed receipt in response to the mail in ballot, entering a voting station where the voter station is a telephone connection to a polling place, and responding to election choices transmitted over the telephone connection to make election choices, printing election results in a printed media, printing election results, and posting the results in a public place, posting election results to an electronic bulletin board, calling a telephone access system having a means of entering the receipt number, the system also having a means of responding to an entered receipt number, entering the receipt number, and receiving a response for the election selections which correspond to the receipt number.
According to a further aspect of this invention, a computer program stored on a computer-readable medium, the computer program including instructions that cause a computer to output election choices, receive election selections, and produce a receipt representation of the election selections, the receipt having a unique receipt number for a voter.
One or more of the following features may also be included: instructions to cause the computer to: output election results to an electronic media, the election results including the election selections and unique receipt number where the electronic media includes an electronic bulletin board, determine whether all election selections are completed, and if the election selections are completed then produce the receipt, and determine whether a voter has indicated completion of the selection process, and if the voter indicates completion produce the receipt.
Embodiments of the invention may have one more of the following advantages. Verifiable voting provides a receipt with a unique identifying number to each voter after making election choices at a voting station. The method includes a publishing process so that each voter can verify that their votes were counted and counted correctly.
The details of one or more embodiments of the invention are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below. Other features, objects, and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the description and drawings, and from the claims.